It's Not How it Seems
by QuietParadox
Summary: What if the books were all a lie? Just a cover up to protect the most powerful family in the world's secrets. Elizabeth Elder is just your average 15 year old genius whose been stuck in boarding schools for the past 5 years. Her whole life has been nothing but questions. But then Lizzie discovers the secrets surrounding her family, and that's when the real clue hunt begins.
1. Lizzie and Carolyn

"Oh my gosh Carolyn! You're going to blow up the entire school!" I exclaimed as I walked into the science classroom to find that my roommate was once again attempting chemistry. It was a strange feeling to just walk into a classroom to finish an experiment for science class and find your roommate working over some crazy experiment that I knew was nothing that Mrs. Birding would assign. I took a quick look around the room. The experiment in question was an angry looking green bubbling concoction over top of a Bunsen burner that was looking more unstable by the minute. The classroom was empty except for Carolyn and I and, Carolyn's curly blonde hair wasn't even pulled back right, if she didn't set the school on fire she was going to set her hair on fire.

"But Lizzy! I've nearly got all the clues that they've found so far in the books! I know it's only a few but maybe I can create just a partial serum. I just need to get my hands on some Uranium-"

"The last thing you need is Uranium; you can barely handle working with salt!" I quickly added, slightly laughing at my own joke. Carolyn with Uranium would probably mean a giant crater 20 miles wide; of course anyone that is untrained with the use of radioactive material would probably end up blowing something up or creating an uncontrollable reaction that would result in either death, an explosion, or in the rare case that you did something right only radiation poising which would most likely end in death.

"No, the last thing you need is Uranium, Ms. Science Prodigy," Carolyn retorted, referencing some of my crazy science experiments, of course I had never used Uranium or any radioactive element in my experiments she knew that if I has gotten a hold of anything like that it probably wouldn't end up well. Carolyn, still snickering at her own joke picked up a vial. I caught a glimpse of the label.

"How in the world did you get king cobra venom?" I asked as I frantically snatched the vial from her hands before she could dump it into the beaker which was looking like you didn't want to be within a few feet of it. The fact that Carolyn had somehow retrieved this ingredient that I would have thought would have been nearly impossible to get in the middle of Oregon slightly scared me.

"E-bay," She said simply while trying to grab the vial from my hands. I stepped back scanning the classroom for somewhere to put the vial.

"Who in the world sells king cobra venom on E-bay?" I asked, trying my best to keep it as far away from her as possible and not laugh. The mere thought of someone selling king cobra venom on E-bay was kind of silly.

"I don't know! Someone from Ohio." She exclaimed, jumping up and down to try and reach the vial that I was holding as high as I possibly could.

"Carolyn, you do know that the Cahill's don't exist and by creating this serum thing the only thing that will happen is that you will blow up the school!" I shouted, putting the vial on the highest shelf in the classroom. A shelf I knew Carolyn was too short to reach.

"The Cahill's do exist I know it, and as if you haven't blown something up before! I know you got kicked out of your last school for creating a huge hole in the science department," Carolyn looked pleased, a smirk creeping across her face, she knew she had countered well, if she didn't get so easily distracted she would have made a nice addition to the debate team.

"That was nothing like this though, at least I was trying an actual scientific experiment, the Sodium Thiopental that I was trying to make just happened to back fire a bit," I quickly explained. It had been a sad, yet exhilarating experiment. Yes I did create a huge gaping hole in a class room, but I did successfully create Sodium Thiopental. Although creating a truth serum happened to limit how believable my lies were. I was a fairly good liar and I was normally able to get myself out of most sticky situations, but having been exposed to a somewhat potent truth serum did complicate things.

"It's nearly the same thing!" Carolyn said before she proceeded to attempt to get the vial from atop the shelf. I used that time to properly dispose of the bubbling concoction she had managed to make. "Hey!" she shouted when she turned around with the vial in hand and realized that her work had just basically been thrown away.

"Come on we need to get out of here, or I'll throw away your venom too." I threatened. Strictly speaking I was already planning on throwing away the venom but it was a good threat to keep her occupied.

"Ugh, fine Lizzy. But I'm going to finish that serum one day and prove to you that the 39 Clues are real! Then you'll have to admit I was right!" She said as she stormed out of the classroom. I followed behind her, grabbing my book bag before leaving and turning off the lights. Thanks to a little messing around with the security system on my part nobody would ever know that Carolyn and I were in the science lab. Those kinds of things were just natural precautions I took; I couldn't get expelled from another school. I didn't know what it was that I had done to make my parents send me away to boarding school after boarding school. I felt so rejected from them, I only got to see them for a couple of weeks out of the year during summer holidays, but it was mainly my dad and Chloe, my younger sister. But in just the last year my parents got a divorce. I wasn't sure why, but it totally changed everything. They didn't want to see me anymore and I rarely got letters, and if I got anything from them it was a short e-mail from my dad asking how I was. I missed the long e-mails that I used to receive every week, the ones detailing every funny thing Chloe, my younger sister, said. It was still a nice surprise to see an e-mail from my dad, but it had been a few months since I had gotten one from mom, she was the only one that had actually appeared to be proud of my love of science, but right before the divorce she changed. But I knew as soon as the divorce went through that things were never going to be the same. Thing's couldn't ever be the same.


	2. Lizzie and Carolyn (part 2)

**Hi guys! So this is Emily! How do you like my story so far? I have tons of it written already and even more plotted out. I'm super excited to get into the main part of it. Did you know that someone from Greece, France, and Canada read my story! I was super excited when I saw that. But here's the next chapter, and let me apologize before hand as this one is a bit short. **

"So what do you think, about Schrödinger's cat?" I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. The book I was reading was lying next to me. I didn't know I was talking to myself, in all honesty I thought I was having a discussion with Carolyn, but as I discovered a minute or two later Carolyn was writing fanfiction on some forum. "Are you even listening to me?" I asked, flipping over on my stomach to face Carolyn who was sitting in front of her lap-top.

"Ya," She said absentmindedly, I knew she was lying, her mind was somewhere else. "Something about a dead cat," I sighed at her over simplification. "But anyways, Ian or Jonah?" She continued focusing back in on her fanfiction.

"What?" I asked, a quizzical look crossing my face.

"Who should I pair Amy with?" She responded as if it were blatantly obvious, which it wasn't.

"I don't know! I thought we were talking about Schrödinger's cat!" I exclaimed.

"What's that?" Carolyn asked, finally turning her attention away from "It's a Cahill life" the fanfiction she had been working on for the past month.

"Oh my gosh! It's what I've been talking to you about for the past 15 minutes." Sometimes I really wondered how we were matched together as roommates; while I preferred physics and engineering Carolyn's main interest was literature and chemistry (whether or not she was good at chemistry was a whole different thing). Her attention was hard to win, and I paid attention to nearly everything.

"Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't realize you were talking to me. You do talk to yourself some times. I just thought you were talking to yourself, so I tuned you out. Sorry," She said timidly, apologizing. The thing was that I couldn't be mad at her. She'd stuck with me through my parent divorce; she was always there to vouch for me if someone suspected that I had maybe disabled the security system, and she always had my back, and I always had hers. I kept her out of trouble; she kept me out of trouble. We needed each other, without Carolyn I don't know where I would be; probably in another school.

"Sorry I yelled at you, and with that whole Amy thing I'd go with Ian," I said, returning a small smile.

"Good choice, an Amian. Mine will be the best fanfiction ever!" She smiled comically and then returned back to the computer, her face illuminated by the electronic glow of the screen.

"Okay," I said laughing a bit. Feeling our conversation come to a close I picked up my book opened it to where I had left off and only a minute or so later I found myself lost in the amazing world of quantum theory.

**What'd you think? Don't forget to review, it totally makes my day to see a review. **

**Until the next time! **


	3. The Courtyard

**Hello fellow clue hunters! It's me, with another update. I hope you like this chapter, and since I haven't really gotten into much of the possibility of copy-right infringement I don't really need a disclaimer, but i'll add one in anyways becase Carolyn needs more dialogue (She's been yelling at me...)**

**Carolyn: QuietParadox/Emily/Elise/Laura/Astrid/the whiny person who never gives me anything interesting to do, does not own the 39 clues or any of its characters. **

**Me: Was that really necessary?**

**Carolyn: Yes, yes it was. **

**Me: I'm not whiny. **

**Carolyn: You are when you start talking about your homework. **

**Me: Go to your room. **

**Carolyn: How can I have a room? I'm a figment of your imagination?**

**Me: *Sigh***

When I was younger and still living with my parents we had a beautiful courtyard right off of the library. I used to read my books under this huge weeping willow that stood in the corner. The grass surrounding the tree was always lush and soft, during the summer holidays I always would bring a pile of books outside to read. The shade the tree provided kept my pale skin from getting burnt and the bark was just soft enough that I could lean my back up against it. Then when I was done reading I'd climb as high as I could before I got close to the glass ceiling and the branches turned fake. I never really figured out why there were fake branches on that weeping willow but I could still climb high. When I got older I tied a swing to the sturdiest branch. I used to swing back and forth for hours, or lean against the rope while I devoured book after book, while the gentle swing lulled me to sleep. It was probably my favorite place in our house. Mom used to have her meetings in the courtyard too. When those were happening I wasn't allowed to play there.

There was one occasion; I was eight years old, where I was playing up in the branches when mom and her work friends came in.

"Elizabeth, are you playing in here?" Mom had called, and I didn't answer. Little eight year old me was curious, per normal, so I stayed as quiet as I could, wanting to know what mom did at her meetings. Normally she went all over the place for work and wasn't at home much more than a few days a week, but sometimes she had her meetings at our house, which were always interesting because my Aunt Lillian always came during those meetings and taught me tons of new things. But I didn't care about Aunt Lillian probably being here, I was too interested in what mom's meetings were about.

Since they were on the other side of the courtyard I had a hard time hearing everything they said, so I had to lean in as far as I could. But then I heard them mention my name.

"Janette, Elizabeth needs to be told soon,"

"She's _too_ young, I got pulled in too young and I don't want the same thing for her," I was pretty sure that this was mom. The voice sounded familiar, but it was a different voice than she used at home, it was more official sounding, every word was clearly spoken and had purpose. Very different from the mom I knew at home, but yet there was still that wisp of familiarity. But mom's voice wasn't the strangest part of the meeting, it was the fact that they were talking about me. Why would they be talking about me during a business meeting?

"She's exactly what we need, she's already showing the signs, her affinity towards science is astounding, we've seen her test scores, her intelligence is already beyond what we were expecting, with the proper training she could, no, would be great," one man urged. His voice reminded me of my moms, powerful, thoughtful. He seemed rather convinced on his point, that I was ready for something, perhaps college? They were talking about my test scores.

"I told you, she's not ready for-" This was my mom again.

But mom never finished her sentence as curiosity got the best of me and my right arm reached for another branch which would have let me lean farther in. I hadn't realized my mistake until I was tumbling out of the tree. I had grabbed one of the fake branches; thankfully there were branches below me to brake my fall as I plummeted towards the ground screaming.

My mom and the others had heard my scream as I fell out of the tree and they all rushed over to where I was lying. Thankfully I hadn't broken a bone or gotten a concussion, but I could tell by the look my mom was giving me that I was in a lot of trouble.

Before my mom could start yelling at me the alarm went off. It was a scary high pitched squeal and all the lights in the house had turned red and started flashing, I knew it was because of me grabbing one of the fake branches. The first time I had climbed the tree when I was younger I had went to high and broke one of the fake branches, I set off the alarm that time. Only a few seconds later my dad rushed into the courtyard carrying my younger sister Chloe.

"What's going on Janette? I heard the alarm sound," Dad asked frantically before realizing that I was pushing myself up from the ground.

"It was Elizabeth, everything's fine. Could you take her to her room please? I'll be talking with her in a little bit," Mom's voice was stern, she was clearly angry, her work friends all looked surprised, but at the same time they also looked very pleased which I thought was odd.

"I'm sorry, I was just curious," I mumbled as I slowly stood up. Mom's friends were all whispering to each other, I made eye contact with them for a moment before going with dad up to my room.

That was the majority of my childhood, reading books, eavesdropping on conversations I knew I wasn't supposed to hear, sneaking onto my parents computer to see if I could find anything. But I guess that's how most kids live their childhood. Except most kids haven't spent five years in boarding schools. Most kids actually talk with their parents. And most kids aren't stuck eating the disgusting cafeteria food for every single meal. It was a sad fact that the Calderwood School didn't have the best food in the world and that I was stuck eating it three times a day. If it wasn't for the salad bar I probably would have starved before my first semester. Carolyn for some reason really liked the food. I think all of her failed chemistry experiments messed with her sense of taste to prefer cardboard over actual food. Of course Carolyn also believed that the 39 clues were real so I couldn't really judge her too much based on her chemistry experiments.

The thing with Carolyn was that I couldn't pull the 39 clues away from her. I might try to help her come to terms with reality that the 39 clues weren't real, but I couldn't do much more than that. Although I felt like I had a family that didn't care about me she barely had a family. She'd gotten into Calderwood on scholarship, and never received e-mails or letters. Her mom had died when she was seven and her dad had to take care of her three younger brothers. They didn't even live in the same country any more, they had moved to Canada a year ago, a little before my parents' divorce. Taking away these books, although there were only a few, would be like taking away the little family she had left. I couldn't do that, although I might've tease her about her slight obsession (although slight is a bit of an understatement) with the 39 clues. I couldn't bear to take away something like that, even if it meant dealing with Carolyn when she somehow got king cobra venom on eBay. I could handle that. If I could handle Ms. Leak when she didn't have her coffee in the morning I could handle anything.


	4. Lizzie's Mistake

**Sorry this one is kind of short, i've just been trying to divvy up what I have on my word doc. in to coherent chapters. Thank you for your nice reviews Lilly, it makes my day to see that I have a review. **

"Ugh!" Carolyn shouted, storming into our dorm room. I quickly looked up from my homework to see Carolyn plop onto the bed face first into her pillow.

"What's wrong now?" I asked her.

"It's that stupid Ms. Starling!" She shouted sitting up just long enough to say that.

"You mean our history teacher?" I asked, hoping that this wasn't going where I thought it was going.

"Yes! She just can't handle the truth!"

"Oh gosh, what did you do now?" I asked, knowing that this would be another trip to the office for Carolyn.

"It honestly wasn't my fault," She said sitting up and grabbed her book, wanting the conversation to end. She knew that my signal for the end of a conversation was me picking up my book, but I wasn't going to let her get away that easily.

"What happened?" I asked again, more sternly this time, pushing myself up from the chair.

"It wasn't really anything to get mad about,"

"Carolyn, what happened?" I pulled the book from her hands and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Ugh," she sighed realizing she'd have to tell me, "I just simply told her that she was too stupid to be an Ekaterina, specifically a Starling." She spat out quickly before grabbing her book from my hands and pretending to read.

"You did what! This is getting out of hand! You're going to end up getting in a whole lot of trouble. Where would you go if you got kicked out?" I paused for a second to regain my composure. "This needs to stop, are you willing to give up a full scholarship for some books? What would your mom think if you did?" I stopped; she looked about ready to cry. "Oh, Carolyn I'm…"

"Don't mention my mom to me again," tears were welling up in her eyes as she ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. I was about to say something when I realized it was probably best not to say anything. That's when I realized I had a few tears in my own eyes. I quickly wiped them away, and left the room. There were a few things I had to resolve with a few teachers.

**Is Carolyn going to forgive Lizzie? **

**Lizzie: **Probably, Carolyn can't hold a grudge.

**What's in store for them next?**

**Carolyn: **Probably more things 39 clues related as this is a 39 clues fanfic.

**When is all the 39 clues stuff going to start happening?**

**QuietParadox: **In a couple of chapters, we're still building to the big reveals. I have a huge chapter coming up soon, not the next one but the one after that. Then a chapter or so later is when "the real hunt begins" *Evil laugh...cough...sputter...choke...cough...clears throat...laughs again*

And i'll leave you with that my little Clue Hunters. **R&R!**


	5. No Records Available

**Thank you Lily for being my sole reviewer! This chapter is dedicated to you! **

After about a day Carolyn decided that it wasn't worth it to be mad at me. Especially when I went and personally wrote letters to every single teacher she had ever angered or offended in any way and sent them out. Of course the teachers believed they were from her, but who would ever know it was me anyways. I told her this once she came out of the bathroom. There were small red lines running down her cheeks from her tears and her nose was runny. She said thank you in A.S.L. before she went to sit on her bed and do her homework.

The odd thing is that I knew she wasn't super mad anymore, but she still acted like it. That is until she broke her steamy silence and said,

"I'm sorry I yelled at you…" Her words were emotionless but I knew that she meant it. I smiled at her, and for just a moment she smiled back, before returning back to her book. She was still the Carolyn I knew, so I let her be. She'd return back to her normal self within the hour.

It actually took about a day before she was completely back to normal. A whole day of trying to entertain myself. I spent a lot of time on the internet, a lot of time editing essays that needed to be turned in on Monday, a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, and a lot of time planning pranks. It was sudden, when she returned back to normal, one moment she was silent, the next moment she was giggling and smiling, and it was all due to her homework.

Sunday night, I was reading and she was on her computer, typing away at her genealogy homework. I always found it odd about how they had genealogy classes in a high school, but it was a boarding school for highly capable students so it sort of made sense. I never had taken the class, knowing that my family was too large to ever be able to make a suitable family tree so I had stuck with the more practical electives such as wood shop (which in retrospect wasn't a good idea since I was a terrible artist and basically doing art with wood and large sharp tools never really ended well, and engineering. I really had enjoyed engineering my teacher liked me because I seemed to have a natural gift for the subject, but again I also happened to have a natural gift for hacking, so whether or not natural gifts are a good thing is beyond me. But because of my 'natural gift' he always gave me very interesting projects to try. For example, he had me design several parts for our schools robotics team. This, for once, actually turned out fairly well and our team ended CAD but they never really turned into much.

"Lizzie come look at this!" Carolyn shouted, so I quickly got up keeping my blanket wrapped around me as I wobbled over towards where she was sitting.

"What is it?" I asked, peering over her shoulder at her computer screen which was on a genealogy website. She had her family brought up, probably having to do with creating yet another family tree, I swear her genealogy class has probably made at least four family trees in the past month or so.

"What's so interesting this time?" I asked, trying to be as polite as possible, but inside I was groaning. It was probably just some random fact that she had discovered about her family like normal. But if it was enough to get the Carolyn I knew back, I'd take it.

"Well, I just found out my several greats grandfather was this really famous photographer a long time ago. He took pictures of all these famous people like Lincoln, and whoever the president was that was before Lincoln,"

"Do you mean James Buchanan?" I asked, retrieving the list of presidents from my mental encyclopedia, which was basically where I kept all and any random facts or information I picked up through reading or just hearing random facts.

"Who was that?" Carolyn was looking at me like I was just making up names.

"The 15th president of the United States," I said slowly, giving her a strange look because she didn't know the 15th president. Of course most people can't list all of the presidents in order like I can so it's understandable that she might not know it.

"Nope, it wasn't him; I meant the president after Lincoln, wasn't his name like Andrew or something?"

"Good job!" I said over enthusiastically "Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States!"

"YES! I got one right!" She shouted. This was the Carolyn that I knew, funny, over-excited about everything, creative, and sarcastic. She was back.

"So is that all you wanted to show me?" I asked, starting to walk towards my bed.

"No, I wanted to look you up too! Maybe you'll be related to some famous king or politician, or maybe we're related!"

"I don't think we're related, but you can go ahead and check,"

"Okay, could you spell out your name?"

"Elizabeth Marie Elder," I said slowly, then I spelled it out so Carolyn might actually spell something right for the first time.

"Okay, does that look right?" I nodded. She did a little more typing before clicking the submit button. The computer stood still for a moment, while a little circle turned in the center of the screen, letting us know that it was searching for me. Another second later it brought up every Elizabeth Marie Elder that was currently alive. There were about 75 results. Then we narrowed it down by age, and the results dwindled dramatically. There were four Elizabeth Marie Elder's that were under the age of 18 and two of them didn't even live in the United States. I scanned the results quickly.

"I'm not here," I said quietly, before looking over the results again.

"That's rubbish! Everyone is on here. Try your mom's name," So she typed in Janette Winthrop, this time she came up. But when we clicked on it there was nothing there. It only displayed the message of _"We're sorry, there is no recorded family history of Janette Winthrop in our data bases, we are sorry for any inconvenience," _

"It's okay Carolyn; they can't have everything on here,"

"I would've thought that you might've been on here though…" she trailed off, I patted her shoulder.

"Maybe next year I'll take genealogy and freak out Mr. Eccleston when I tell him that I'm not on there and have him do all the family researching for me," I smiled down at her. She giggled for a second, probably imagining crazy Mr. Eccleston going mad over trying to find any information on my family. It was actually pretty funny to think about, and I left Carolyn to finish her homework while I returned to my bed. Still wrapped in my blanket.

**Hmm...As many of you may have guessed i'm foreshadowing what's to come. I'm sure a lot of you also know where this is going, or do you? I'm full of surprises. Comment your theories down below. A big long chapter is coming up next, i'm really excited about it. The next chapter is where this fan-fic gets really 39-clues-y (Yes it is a word because I just dubbed it a word)**

**Here is your hint: "'****Let my daughter go,' he was dead serious, and was glaring at the two men with a look that could've cut through steel."**

**R&R**

**Peace, Love, and Lily Pads**

**-Emily (AKA QuietParadox)**


	6. A Haunting Memory

**Hahaha! Here it is! The longest chapter. Also one of my favorites, the teacher here is inspired off of my actual math teacher XD. This chapter is also dedicated to Lily and everyone who actually read my last chapter as I haven't gotten a view in 3 days *cries* Here's to you! Since i'm getting into the 39-clues-y stuff (I told you it was a word!) i'll do a little disclaimer. Why don't you do it Lizzie, I put your life in mortal danger multiple times during the course of this chapter. **

**Lizzie: **QuietParadox does not own the 39 clues, or the branches, or the clues. Although she does own me, and decides to put my life in the line a lot just because she can which I don't appreciate.

**QuietParadox (me): **Oh calm down Lizzie, i'm just giving you a backstory.

**Lizzie: **Ya, a back story that has totally messed up my mental stability.

**Me: **Oh well, on with the story!

**Lizzie: ***Sighs* 

Ms. Leak was probably the most boring teacher in the entire world. No, scratch that, the entire universe (assuming that aliens do actually exist). Her voice was so mind-numbingly dull that I couldn't help but compare her to a leek. Her name was about as close to Leek as you possibly could get, she even looked like a leek; she was really tall and skinny, with these little tuffs of hair on the top of her head. It was a good comparison to keep me occupied during literature. Carolyn was lucky; she had ended up with Mr. Fraser. He constantly made Doctor Who jokes and references and he actually made the text sound interesting while Ms. Leak made even the most exciting of texts sound dead and dry. Like someone had come and beat it down with a hammer. So I started doodling on my papers, some random equations, leeks, Schrödinger's cat, and a few other things. My doodles, which in actuality really sucked, surrounded the whole outside of the paper. By the time the bell was just about to ring my pencil lead was just a dull little stub and I had drawings in every clear space on the page. I was seriously hoping that we wouldn't have to turn it in. I looked up towards the clock, only two more minutes left. I started packing up with everyone else; we were as quiet as we could possibly be so that Ms. Leak wouldn't hear us.

"Don't start packing up yet," It was Ms. Leak, she had caught us. She turned around, and we all had to stare into her vegetable looking face. "You can all stay after class for one minute just for ignoring my valuable teaching. You'll all-" But she never finished. Instead her voice was replaced with flashing lights and a squeal that resembled the fire alarm. It was a very similar security system to the one we had at home, mainly since my Uncle Arthur designed it. Which is one of the reasons I even got in here, although the particular one we had at home was way more advanced than the one that was here at Calderwood.

"Lock down, armed intruder on campus!" The headmistress's voice came over the intercom, frantic and worried before it cut out. Panic washed over the whole room just as quickly as the fire alarm had. Except me, I was lost in childhood memories, the flashing lights, the squeals, the intruder, it all brought back a memory that I originally hoped I had omitted from my memory.

I was 9 years old, about 6 months before I left for Anchorage Hill, my first boarding school. You couldn't see the moon that night because I remembered I had been trying to look for stars with my telescope but the clouds had gotten in the way. The night was crisp and smelled like the chimonthanus flowers that dad had planted a few years back. Although I was supposed to be sleeping I was instead sitting with the windows open on the window seat reading my favorite Stephen Hawking book. I remember that it was windy that night since the drapes were blowing in my face and the March winds kept catching the pages of my book so I had to hold them down.

I wasn't exactly sure what time it was, but I knew it was late, since I was starting to feel tired. But both my mom and my dad were up so it was probably sometime around midnight. I was also getting ready to actually go to bed since I kept drifting off and losing my place in my book which was annoying. But as I closed my book I heard the alarms go off. I was pretty used to them now since we had been having some troubles with the security system and false alarms so I kind of ignored them as I started walking towards my bed. But that's when this giant grappling hook flew through my open window catching on the window sill. The fact that my window was open was slightly my fault since I had just finished reading Peter Pan a few weeks before that and left my window open, waiting for Peter to come (although I knew that he wasn't), mom and dad both really didn't like that habit and had been continuously closing my window every night as they came up to bed.

The sound that the hook had made when it hit the window sill caused me to turn around, I wouldn't have probably known it was there if it wasn't for the loud clunk. I stared at it for a moment, trying to get a grasp at what was going on. When I finally realized I started running towards the door, knowing that I needed to get out but I tripped on the drapes. I was lying on the floor, staring at my window, trying to scramble to my feet when these two people climbed through my window. Wearing all black, speaking with heavy accents, and they had guns. I screamed, as any scared out of their wits 9 year old would have.

I don't know what it was in me but I somehow made it to my feet, trying to reach my closet where I had the escape hatch for emergency situations like this, that's where mom always told me where to go if I couldn't get to her or daddy in time. But I didn't make it. I couldn't get the door open fast enough. One of them had the collar of my pajamas in their strong grip and pulled me away from the closet before I could even get the door halfway open.

"Where are they?" One of them asked, a man.

"What?" I said nearly crying. I was squirming, kicking, waving my arms around, trying to somehow escape, but my squirms were useless, I was a scrawny little nine year old trying to fight someone who was three times my size.

"Your parents you stupid child," His hand was over his gun, my eyes widened and I instantly realized the seriousness of the situation. They had guns, why were these people in my rooms with guns asking where my parents were.

"Downstairs!" I cried, not knowing what else to do. I wasn't really sure if they were downstairs or not but it was my best guess. A few seconds later they were literally dragging/carrying me by my pajamas out of my room, across the hall, down the stairs. I was squirming the entire time, still trying my futile attempts to escape. For a moment, as we were going down the stairs I caught a glimpse of mom, she had Chloe in her arms, who was about five at that time, she was running into my room, using the back doors, the ones that were hidden in the walls. I wanted to scream to her but I didn't, not wanting to alert the scary people about her being there.

They seemed to know where they were going and made it to the Parlor just as quickly as I would have, maybe even faster since they could take longer strides than I could have. We got to the parlor where my dad was fussing with the security system controls that were in one of the wall panels, obviously trying to turn them off.

One of them cleared his throat rather loudly and dad turned around, he probably wasn't expecting what he saw, or maybe he was since some of the security camera screens of the hallways were visible.

"What do you want?" my dad said, somewhat calmly, somewhat frantically, as he turned around to see us. He looked startled, jumping back a little bit, but then he steadied himself when he saw me, still squirming. "Let my daughter go," he was dead serious, and was glaring at the two men with a look that could've easily cut through steel.

"Give us what we want then," I saw the man pull out the gun and pointed it towards my dad.

"What's going on daddy?" I shouted staring at the gun, hoping that I was just going to wake up soon.

"Shut it!" the man who was holding me shouted.

"It's okay Lizzie, I've got this" My dad said to me before turning to the two men. "Now let her go, she isn't involved, she hasn't done anything," His voice was stern.

"Give us what we want then, and we'll go and leave your little family alone," They insisted, they were smiling I could tell by the way their voices sounded.

"I-I d-don't know anything and neither does she, y-you won't get what you want here," Dad explained, he stuttered a bit as he talked, he obviously wasn't as he was before; his eyes were darting all over the place, obviously looking for something.

"Where's Janette then?" He was talking about mom. Why was he talking about mom? I was about to ask but I decided against it. So I just squirmed some more.

"S-she's not h-here. I t-told you, I d-don't know anything," I wanted to run out to daddy, he looked so scared, his eyes were now focused on me. He was visibly trembling and his stuttering was getting worse.

"What a shame, hopefully this will help you remember," I saw daddy's eyes widen quickly, I turned my head towards where he was looking at. I immediately wished I hadn't. There was a gun pointed at me. Not a fake one like in the movies, but a real one. I didn't know what was going on anymore, strictly speaking I still don't know what happened that night, obviously there was something these guys wanted, there was a gun pointed at my head, and mom was missing. I was just a scared little nine year old, caught in the middle of something that was way too big for me to understand.

"Stop!" It was mom. She came running in through the backdoor, her hair soaking wet from the sprinkler systems. I wasn't so scared anymore. Mom always handled bad situations, even during that one time when those women were following us while we were out shopping. She always saved the day. I was still scared out of my wits, but at least my crying had stopped. "Don't worry Lizzie, you'll be fine. Now what do you want?" Her voice was even steadier than dads had been in the beginning, it was the voice she had used during those business meetings, she didn't seem to be scared at all, but I was still scared, even though she was there. But I knew even she was probably screaming on the inside. Mom was always good at hiding her emotions.

"I think you know what we want, and we better get it quick don't you think Lizzie?" He snickered, the gun was still pointed at my but when I looked around for dad he wasn't where he was last.

"It's me you want, now leave her be," I remember moms voice catching in her throat, something that didn't happen often.

"Give them to us now!" The man screamed. Then there was screaming. Mine mostly because the one man that was holding me just collapsed as well as the man who was holding the gun. I scrambled up from the floor to find my dad standing a few feet back, he had two needles in his hands.

"Wow, I never thought I could sneak up on a L-" Dad said trying to lighten the mood, but before dad could finish mom gave him the death glare that she gave me sometimes when I was caught doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. But I didn't care about that. I ran up to my mom, with her soaking wet hair and hugged her. I didn't let go until she walked me up to her room where I fell asleep squeezing her hand while had stayed downstairs.

"Lizzie! Come on!" exclaimed Becca, one of the girls who sat next to me. I blinked a few times, glad that someone pulled me out of that horrific nightmare. The only difference was that nightmares are real, and this one was. "Hurry up; you can't just keep sitting there!" It was then that I realized my entire class was chaotically striding towards the teachers halls. The space in between the class rooms meant for teachers. But it was the safest place in an emergency, due to it being in the center of the school and having these huge metal doors that basically prevented anything from escaping. There also happened to be an escape hatch to the roof if there was a fire or something like that.

So I pushed myself up, blindly following the crowd, Marie pulled me along behind her. The funny thing was that I wasn't scared; actually I was more afraid of the memories than I was of the idea of an intruder being on campus. I know it's silly to be afraid of just memories, but the thing with memories is that they stay will you the rest of your life. No matter how hard you try to forget them they always are there. Lurking in the dusty corners of your mind, ready to pounce on your unsuspecting conscious. The scariest times are when you can't escape from them, when they trap you and you can't run away.

Like I said, it's silly to be afraid of a memory. It's not real. It might've been real once, but that's in the past, memories are just….A quote came to mind.

"_You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories,"- _Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I think that thought was the most frightening of them all.

**So how'd you like it? I literally worked on this part for like two hours straight because I needed to know what would happen next, (yes even I the writer had absolutely no idea how it was actually going to end). Are you seeing all the 39 clues stuff start to come into play? **

**Questions: **

**What do you think will happen next?**

**Who do you think the intruder is?**

**Will you review? **

**Does reviewing make Emily (QuietParadox) and Lizzie (From the story) happy? (Hint: yes it does)**

**Well thanks for reading. R&R. So long, farewell, goodbye. **


	7. The Past Comes Back

**Two reviews! This is a bit of a shorter chapter, it's more of a filler chapter to get from point A. (Everything before this) to point B. Which is where the 39 clues really comes into play. OOH! I'm so excited! **

It ended up being a false alarm.

All that fuss, just for a false alarm.

They ended up cancelling classes for the day, and thank goodness for that because I was pretty sure that my essay on the Cold War was not my best and it desperately needed another hour of editing.

I didn't go looking for Carolyn as I was walking back to our dorm, honestly I was hoping she wouldn't be there. I needed to be alone. I needed to shut myself off from the world and just do busy work. Keep my mind off of…I couldn't even think about it anymore without my heart beat picking up and those memories flooding back. I had thought that I had eliminated it from my memory. Those few minutes of just pure terror though were branded onto my brain, just like all those silly little nursery rhymes are. You might not always be thinking about them, but they're always there. I thought about that for a moment as I wandered through the hallways, pulling my rolling backpack behind me. I hadn't even told Carolyn about that one memory, even though she had basically spilled her life story to me over bowls of popcorn and all-nighters. I hadn't done the same to her. Hearing Carolyn's childhood made me think about how privileged I was, to have both a mom and a dad, to have a room to myself. I felt bad. She deserved more than what I was telling her. So I decided that night that I was going to tell her. I was going to tell her why I was so scared of fire drills, why I woke up screaming in the middle of the night, what my childhood was really like. I was going to tell her. Well, I thought I was going to tell her.

"Elizabeth Elder, please report to the office," The headmistress's voice came over the intercom. I stopped in my tracks, everyone in the hall turned to face me. I gave a weak smile as I turned around and started walking towards the office. I wouldn't see Carolyn again that night. Actually I probably wouldn't see Carolyn again for a long time, maybe ever.

A billion thoughts were rushing through my head as I walked to the office. What if they found out about the chemistry experiments, or Carolyn somehow getting king cobra venom? Oh, I hoped that they didn't know about my messing around with the security systems. Or changing that one grade on that essay because it was clearly at least an A- not a B+. There were so many possibilities, so many things that could go wrong. I was so careful; I tried my best to make sure I wouldn't ever be caught.

I grew increasingly more nervous the closer I got to the office. For a moment I wanted to turn around and go hide in my room. But I decided against it, they had a master key for every room.

I went outside. The office was in a separate building about 50 feet away. Every step I took I was sure of was one step closer towards being my last step here on campus. The sky was grey, you couldn't see the sun, and the wind blew my curly brown hair in my face. I hated January. It was too cold, too windy, and too snowy.

When I was younger I used to love the snow, I spent hours playing in it since I was homeschooled and my dad always said "If all the schools are closed why can't our little school be closed too" then we'd get all dressed up in our warmest of clothes and make snowmen that looked like Albert Einstein using the dry grass from the field that wasn't too far from our house for the hair, and we'd build these huge snow forts and have snowball fights with each other. Dad normally won. I remember one day when we were playing out in the snow, hearing laughter a little way off in the distance. Our house was the only house on our road but our road couldn't be the only road, there had to be other houses somewhere, maybe those houses had kids my age also playing in the snow. When I had asked daddy about that he said that they didn't like us. When I asked why he said it was because brought the wrong type of company. I didn't ask any more questions about that. Mom and Dad both hated answering those kinds of questions.

I made it to the office, my stomach feeling like a big empty pit. I couldn't get expelled, not again. But like every other time I took a deep breath and headed in. Who and what I saw I didn't believe.

"Mom?"

**Muhahahaha! Cliff hangers! Oh wow, I love this. Now I can get why my favorite authors always find it so enjoyable to leave everyone off on a cliffhanger. Comment your thoughts and what you think will happen next down below! The next chapter should be up soon so keep an eye out for it. **

**From your cool as a cantaloupe friend and writer extraordinaire, **

**Emily**


	8. Updates and a Sneak Peek

**Hey guys, so this will be kind of an update post.**

I cannot believe how busy i've been. So busy that I already have the chapters written I just don't have time to upload them. Also the next chapter is being edited right now since it had some big plot holes in it so I want to fix those before I post it. So ya. Just so I don't end up getting in trouble here is a quick, _**What's to come **_ sort of thing.

**What's to Come?**

**-**I could just imagine Carolyn now, getting to our room only to find that I wasn't there. To find out that I wasn't coming back. _How could I just leave her like this?_

_-_**"****Wiz-kid siblings win National Science Fair".**

**-**"Which is a lot harder than it seems, (Blank) are experts at lie-detecting. I learned this a few years back when Mrs. Hartley and I's paths crossed. That was a rather unfortunate event, I was-"

"-Thank you for that little snippet Arthur, didn't you say something about not scaring her?

-It was late at night when we finally arrived at our destination. The cold January clouds had parted and the sky was blanketed with the same tiny pinpricks of light that I had stared at my whole life. The fact that those little dots that were as bright as a brand new LED bulb were thousands of light years away baffled me. When I was very young I remembered telling dad that I was going to become an astronaut and bring a star home with me. He had laughed when I told him.

"That's impossible Lizzie, those stars are thousands and thousands of light years away. A light year is the amount of time it takes for light to travel in a year. How fast does light travel now?"

"Approximately 3.00*10^8 meters per second," I had said nearly automatically. I had just recently read a book on light at that time.

"That's right, now that's pretty fast isn't it?" I nodded, "Now imagine how far that light could travel in a year, now times that by thousands. That's how far away those stars are. That's farther than mankind has ever traveled, and can travel with today's technology. Stars are actually huge masses of plasma, that's what our sun is. Our sun in the sky is the closest star to us, and it's just a middle sized star. Imagine trying to fit the sun in a rocket! Maybe one day though Lizzie you'll be able to replicate the makeup of a star on the small scale or something like that, and then you'll be able to have a star,"

I told Carolyn about that once, she was appalled by what my dad said to me. That he would crush my dreams like that. I remember how confused I was at her response, it was funny that I thought I could take a star home with me, not appalling that my dad told me that I couldn't. I quickly explained to her how it wasn't that bad, and it was kind of like getting a question on a test wrong, you need someone to tell you what the actual answer is so you don't go through life thinking that the wrong answer is actually right.

She looked even more confused at my response than I did at her response. But instead of trying to re-explain it to her I had left it at that.

The stars that night reminded me of that. Lately a lot of things reminded me of moments in my childhood, the years before I left everything behind to grow up. Mom and Dad weren't there to hold my hand when the going got tough, I remember having to dry my eyes and figure out a way to get around the problem. Problems were made to be solved.

How'd you like that? I know that it's not much of a chapter but I felt bad not giving you guys anything to read. So there's a bit of a sneak peek.

Peace, Love, and Daleks.


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